The end of Chinese New Year - Lanterns Festival

The end of Chinese New Year - Lanterns Festival (元宵節 yuán xiāo jié).

Children had so many questions about the story of the Lanterns Festival and we had fun solving the lantern riddles at the end as a traditional thing to do during this day.

The story involved a concubine named 元宵yuán xiāo. Emperor漢武帝hàn wǔ dì has a favourite adviser called 東方朔dōng fāng shuò.

dōng fāng shuò went to the garden one day and heard this girl called 元宵yuán xiāo crying and ready to jump into the well to commit suicide. He stopped her and realized that she was very sad as she never had a chance to see her family since she’s been living in the palace.

dōng fāng shuò promised to find out a solution to allow yuán xiāo to reunite with her family.

dōng fāng shuò went to the biggest town called長安cháng ān and set up a fortune telling stall. Everyone got the same prediction that on the 15th Jan lunar calendar, they will burn by fire.

Everyone was very scared and worried about their future and asked for help.

dōng fāng shuò told them the god of fire would send a fairy in red riding a silver donkey to burn down the town. They should plead the fairy for help. The red fairy left a message for the emperor. The emperor asked dōng fāng shuò’s advice. dōng fāng shuò said that the god of fire loved to eat tāng yuán (rice balls in sweet soup) and emperor should order every house in the city to make the same to worship the god of fire. Also, every house should make & hang red lanterns. Lastly, everyone should carry their lanterns to the street and watch lanterns, decoration, fireworks to fool the god of fire to think the city was burned.

The emperor followed the plan and it worked.

yuán xiāo’s family went and reunited with her. The town was saved so the emperor ordered that they should do the same every year. The festival was name after yuán xiāo.

Older children had a quick art time to make this lantern festival decoration. We learnt how to write Happy Lanterns Festival.









Here's the animated story.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBhH9ILDKts

Chinese New Year - Snake 2013

 恭喜發財！ gōng xǐ fā cái ！Congratulations and prosperous wealth!

This is another phrase we learnt to say during the Chinese New Year. 
Children enjoyed the stories - the story of Nian and the 12 zodiac animals. 



We have been busy this week！See what we are up to!!
壓歲錢 yā suì qián (suppress age money) is normally given to children during the Chinese New Year.

Money in red envelops 紅包 hóng bāo are also commonly used for family occasions too like for the new born baby and at the wedding. We call it lucky money and hope this symbolic gesture will bring our children much needed luck and good work in the journey of learning Mandarin Chinese!!

發糕 fā gāo （prosperity cake) is streamed Chinese cupcakes that made of rice flour, self raising flour, brown sugar and water. It's one of the traditional food we eat during the Chinese New Year to encourage prosperity! Fa means prosperity or raise. :-)Most children enjoyed it and one would have a very prosperity year ahead as he had 3 fa gao in the class today!

We made this for children to bring home today.

油飯 yóu fàn (Oily rice) is streamed rice dish that is made of Glutinous rice (sticky rice/sweet rice).

It is a popular dish to have for celebration, especially when new baby is born.  As we have vegetarian in the class so I made this with dried mushrooms, shallots, smoked tofu & soya source with seasoning too.

祥龍辭舊歲、靈蛇舞新春 xiáng lóng cí jiù suì 、líng shé wǔ xīn chūn

祥龍辭舊歲、靈蛇舞新春
xiáng lóng cí jiù suì 、líng shé wǔ xīn chūn
Lucky dragon ending the old year, wise snake flourish the new spring!

This is the spring couplets we are giving away this year - the year of snake 2013.
All thanks to the OCAC (Overseas Chinese Affairs Council) for their support!

成功了!A great success!

They are so pretty and it doesn't take long to do it!

Chinese painting and calligraphy workshop

We're approaching the Chinese New Year and learning through fun activity could not be easier!

Working with 毛筆 máo bǐ (hair writing brush) has been one of the most popular activities and I came up with the idea of combine that into a cute little gift box. It was happened to be one child's birthday today so we had a little treat in each of them inside.

On the box it said 大吉大利 dà jí dà lì （means super lucky & super profits).

Chinese like to play words that share the same pronunciations but might be different meanings. People would say nice wishes to each other during the Chinese New Year (especially for those who have businesses for this particular one).

吉 jí means luck and oranges hold a symbolic meaning.

利 lì means profits and pineapple represent that.

Many dishes we normally have on the Chinese New Year's day (some family will have it on CNY's eve) have very similar effects.

We have to have a whole fish as the word 魚 yú (fish) has the same pronunciation as the word 餘 (remain or surplus / having leftovers of money).

餃子 jiǎozi （dumplings) have the shape of 元寶 yuán bǎo （gold ingot), also the word jiǎozi shares the same pronunciation with 角子 jiǎozi that is a small coin used in old times.

年糕 nián'gāo (Sticky Rice cake), also called Chinese new year's cake. It is considered good luck to eat nian gao because it has the symbolism of increasing prosperity every year.

全雞 quán jī （whole chicken) - family fortune and togetherness of the family (chicken with its head, tail and feet symbolizes completeness).

There are many many more!!!

窗花剪紙 chuāng huā jiǎn zhǐ （Window flower paper cutting)

Paper cutting is one of traditional Chinese art and it's popular during this time of the year. Homes and schools will be decorated with lots of red paper cutting arts. I ran out of red papers so I am using green for the door panels of this Chinese New Year greeting card.  We enjoy this time of the year not for its weather but for the fun part.  The hanging decoration has 6 sides and we learn how to fold the paper and how many folds we need for varies designs before we cut it too.
The theme we have planned for children is to cut these: 火花 huǒ huā (fire works)，春 chūn (spring)，蝴蝶 hú dié (butterfly)，心 xīn (Heart)，燈籠 dēng lóng (lantern)，隨意 suí yì (free style) and guess what was the most popular one - free style of course. It's because of the surprise of what their artworks would turn out to be when they open it up!
I found some more red paper and "free style" this one. Turned out that children think it looks like the head of Chinese Lion Dance.
What a surprise!

What!!?? It's our term to the stage!! 什麼？？！！該我們上場了！sh me ？？！！shén me!!?? gāi wǒ men shàng chǎng le ！

What!!?? It's our term to the stage!! 

 什麼？？！！該我們上場了！shén me       gāi wǒ men shàng chǎng le ！

I wonder what are they planning to put on the show for our Chinese New Year celebration for the year of Snake (2013)!

Coming up is our Chinese New Year which is landing on Sun 10^th Feb this year where the year of snake will begin, there will be some fun stuff for children to do too!

There will be more update on this website I hope re the celebration in Dublin.

http://www.cny.ie/

Mandarin Chinese Learning Apps

From the activity of “story chain” we have this week, I learnt that many children got brilliant gadgets for Christmas so I thought to make the most of it (Maximise the screen time!!!), I should recommend a few FREE apps to you.

These series of audio books are called Kung-Fu Chinese, they are popular children stories (i.e. Noah’s ark etc). The pain I found is each app is one story only.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.qll.sb020&feature=search_result#?t=W251bGwsMSwxLDEsImNvbS5xbGwuc2IwMjAiXQ..

Children’s Chinese reader.  This app has 39 short lessons with phrases and games.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=air.com.A5qchannel.ch00

Mandarin Madness (learn lots of words and phrases via gaming)

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nativetongue.mandarin_madness.pro&feature=search_result#?t=W251bGwsMSwxLDEsImNvbS5uYXRpdmV0b25ndWUubWFuZGFyaW5fbWFkbmVzcy5wcm8iXQ..

Discovering Chinese - Mandarin for Beginners

By Better Chinese

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/discovering-chinese-ipad-edition/id522265479?ls=1&mt=8

Google translate

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.apps.translate&hl=en

You can download Google pinyin IME or similar if you haven’t got the Chinese input methods on your gadget already.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.inputmethod.pinyin&hl=en

http://www.memrise.com/home/

There’re 4 courses you can take online and found it quite good myself. The apps are not available yet I am afraid.

冬至 （dōng zhì）Winter solstice

To celebrate the winter solstice as well as the last class of the term, we have made, cooked & ate 湯圓 tāng yuán (glutinous rice balls) which is still the tradition for winter solstice.  I like my tāng yuán in hot gingery sweet soup when I was a kid and now I love them in savoury soup. Some bigger tāng yuán have sweet filling like sesame, red bean, peanut paste inside which are available in most Asian stores.  The round shape of rice balls represent closures and family reunion and children gain one year older.....I still remembered I was told that I won't be one year older if I didn't finish my rice balls when I was a kid!

Younger children enjoyed our workshop of making the tang yuan and spring rolls.  Pity that only some of them like eating the tang yuan.  Older children were making dumplings.  We also did a Chinese painting workshop with older children and I was impressed with their art works!!

Pity that I didn't get to take more photos but these two.

聖誕卡 （圣诞卡） shèng dàn kǎ Christmas Cards

We always look out for different arts and crafts ideas for different occasions and to suit different age groups too.  The outcomes are fabulous and children can never had enough time for crafts!  Here're some photos we have so far and more to come later on this week.

The younger children learn to say 聖誕快樂（圣诞快乐）shèng dàn kuài lè which literary translated Jesus's birthday happy (Happy Christmas).  They coloured in the words and decorated their cards.

The older children learn to write 聖誕快樂 and made the waterfall cards.

Only 27 more sleeps until Christmas (聖誕節shèng dàn jié）

This is the exciting time of the year for children.  We have so many ideas of advent calendars for children of different ages/classes this year.  We will be learning the Christmas songs in the next few weeks and really looking forward to the last class which we will be having varies workshops and the usual end of the term party.
Here's the first advent calendar children made, they wrote the numbers from 1 to 24 all by heart! They can counting down the days with one little treat inside the cone a day.  The treat can be a sweet (which we have got plenty of left overs from Halloween), a sweet message for someone, a Chinese word they will learn, a activity/game they want to do/play and etc. More pictures to follow from other classes (if I remember to take photo of them!).

The older children made this advent calendar with their own creative ideas by using different shapes of papers.  I was too busy to take photos of their brilliant work and here's the one I made.

Santa's advent calendar was a great success last year so we have it again for the younger children. Santa will grow his beard bit by bit each day and by the time Santa grow all his beard, it's Christmas!

Here's Max's work!

Never enough time for crafts!

Would you like to make spider web by paper cutting or the vampire origami? Children shouted "Can we do both please?".

So to avoid the disappointment, we did both.

Sorry the home time was delayed! 

萬聖節快樂 wàn shèng jié kuài lè Happy Halloween!

Are you dare enough to eat these tea eggs (茶葉蛋 chá yè dàn)??We have got plenty if you dare!Tea egg is a traditional snack and still very popular in Asia. You can find them in many street vendors in China, Chinese herbal shops in HongKong and 7-11 convenience stores in Taiwan.

Halloween in Mandarin is literally translated - ten thousand saints festival and I guess because this is used to called "all saints' day" and ten thousands covers "all"??!!

Song - What is your name? 你叫什麼？nǐ jiào shén me

你叫什麼？你叫什麼？

nǐ  jiào shén me       nǐ  jiào shén me

你幾歲？你幾歲？

nǐ    jǐ   suì       nǐ    jǐ  suì

我叫Evan，我叫Evan

wǒ jiào                    wǒ jiào

我三十八歲，我三十八歲

wǒ sān shí bā  suì        wǒ sān shí bā  suì

中秋節快樂 zhōng qiū jié kuài lè Happy mid-autumn festival

中秋節快樂 zhōng qiū jié kuài lè Happy mid-autumn festival

We have the first class tasted the moon cakes (月餅 yuè bǐng） today - most of them tried but some wanted more! Due to the very limited supplies I have, I can not offer more, sorry kids! I shall order more next year!

We enjoyed watching the animated story about the moon festival and the colouring afterwards.

Mid-Autumn Festival

We are so delighted to have so many children enrolled this Sept. Welcome! 歡迎 huān yíng!

We've had busy two weeks to get to know everybody and make every child feel welcome.
Next week will be an even more exciting week  for us as we are planning some interesting activities with children to celebrate one of our big festivals - Mid Autumn Festival, 中秋節 zhōng qiū jié.
Here're some youtube links about the festival.  Enjoy!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXczHYZcRvo&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYu2ksKOMIE&feature=related

Culture Teacher at EAIE 2012

What a start of a new term! I was delighted to be invited to the EAIE 2012 exhibition as a culture teacher and very proud to be part of the team of 19 exhibiting universities from Taiwan.
I had fun in those three days demostrating the Chinese art - caligraphy, painting and paper cutting.

Here're some photos to share.

Enrolling for Sept. 2012

Dublin School of Mandarin Chinese for Children 都柏林中文小學

Is now enrolling for Sept 2012. Please send us an email for application form.

The class for 1st year younger children will be hold on Tuesdays 15:30-17:30 and the class for older children will be hold on Thursday 16:00-17:30PM

Please note that the text books we carefully selected are approved by both Dept of Education and the Overseas Compatriots Affairs Commission in Taiwan and are sponsored by OCAC for this coming academic year.

The advantage of these series of books is they include both traditional and simplified Chinese characters as well as the homework books. I always wish my children can learn both systems and these series turns my dream into a reality! More info can be found here.

Living Mandarin (Mon, Tue and Wed’s class)
http://www.skymandarin.org/living-mandarin.htm

Speak Mandarin in 1000 words (Thur’s class)
http://media.huayuworld.org/lang/medium/ch_1000/index.htm

More photos from our 2nd week of summer camp!

Thank you so much for the encouragement and the opportunity to make our first ever Chinese summer camp possible!

We had a great time and a very successful summer camp!  We’ll be doing this every summer!